Turning Intelligence into Magic: A Case For Creativity

“How many impressions? Did awareness go up? How does it compare to the competition?”

These days, marketers seem to have fallen in love with measuring the success of their advertising – spurred on by the internet and its measurable clicks, the old adage of “half of my advertising money is wasted, I just don’t know which half” is no longer true. Clients ask for effectiveness and efficiency, and rightfully so. Marketing communications is where art meets business, bound to achieve tangible results.

But the main ingredient that will help achieve the goals that have been set is still creativity. Now more than ever any piece of communication needs an idea: An idea that can help it stand out and cut through the increasing clutter of messages. An idea that can touch people’s hearts and connect them to the brand. An idea based on some universal human truth, an observation that is true in London and Sao Paulo, in Singapore and Shanghai.

So after the planner has found the one insight, one observation, molded into a truly single-minded proposition that will give the creative team a basis, a topic and a direction, the hardest job in any agency begins: Turning intelligence into magic. Finding new creative ways to express the insight, adding that sparkle, the element of surprise, the smile that helps us notice, understand, remember. And doing it again and again, always new, always different.

Discipline is also needed on the other side of the equation: Clients need to realize that their quest for numbers, the need to see awareness points and most-likely-to-use scores move up, has a time and place: after the campaign has run. They are right to expect the communication campaign to touch their consumers, to move them and change their minds.

But they need to remember that they hired an agency for a reason: Because they need the expert in discovering insights and crafting messages that will reach their target, will speak to them and hopefully leave a lasting impression. If the ideas used to get the message across are new and fresh, they could bomb in a pre-test. Because testing basically works like a rear-view-mirror: All over the world, consumers reference new campaigns against what they know and have seen before – so if the idea is original, there is little to compare it with, and consumers may be unsure how to judge it in a focus group situation. Instead, a brand that wants to be a leader needs to look forward, to constantly refresh. Also, clients need to understand that research is by far no exact science – much depends on the set-up and then the interpretation of results.

Clients need to trust their agency as much as they trust their surgeon: Both know what they are doing, they have the right tools to achieve results and they have their best interests at heart.